The National Institutes of Health is developing recommendations for its institutes to support the next generation of biomedical researchers. This is part of the Next Generation Researchers Initiative, or NGRI, mandated under the 21st Century Cures Act. The working group is currently meeting and, while an official Request For Information has not been issued for the initiative, the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) has put out a request for comments. You can make your voice heard here. See more details below from ASBMB: “Make your voice heard. Provide feedback on the National Institutes of Health’s Next Generation of Researchers Initiative. The National Institutes of Health is developing recommendations for its institutes to support the next generation of biomedical researchers — and we want to know what you think. The initiative aims addresses the difficulties that early- and mid-career investigators face as they seek funding for their research. The initiative aims to provide long-term stability for scientists developing independent research careers. The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology wants your comments on this NIH initiative. The ASBMB supports policies and programs that make the life science research enterprise more sustainable. The ASBMB, led by its Public Affairs Advisory Committee, is paying attention as the NIH proposes new policies, and we are working to provide substantive comments and feedback. The NIH plans to finalize its recommendations for the NGRI by December. The ASBMB wants the agency to hear your opinions. Please provide you feedback on the NGRI by Friday, Sept. 28, in the fields below. We will collate all comments and send them to the NIH. Your identifying information will...

Reminder: our survey on attitudes and experiences in peer review is open until September 21st – please fill it in and urge your peers to do so too! https://tinyurl.com/ECRs-in-peer-review As part of our effort to increase transparency about the role of early career researchers in peer review, we are trying to collect data on the policies that journals have implemented with respect to involvement of early career researchers. Particularly we are looking at how transparent co-reviewer policies are, and whether expectations around co-reviewing are made clear. We are part of a collaborative project, TRANsparency in Scholarly Publishing for Open Scholarship Evolution or TRANSPOSE, to work on gathering this and other data about scholarly publishing. This project has been accepted as part of the Scholarly Communication Institute 2018 Meeting in Chapel Hill, NC, where the theme is “Overcoming Risk“. One of the risks identified in our project is the risk ECRs face when it comes to ensuring their scholarly contribution is recognized. What is TRANSPOSE? TRANSPOSE (TRANsparency in Scholarly Publishing for Open Scholarship Evolution) is a grassroots project to crowdsource journal policies on peer review and preprints. The project is a collaborative effort across a number of different organizations dedicated to making publishing more transparent. Future of Research is particularly interested in the component you can search below – which journals allow co-reviewers to be named! Why TRANSPOSE? Journal policies on peer review and preprints are variable and complex. Existing databases (such as SHERPA/RoMEO and Publons) contain some, but not all, of this information. How can I help? If you’d like to...

We are launching our #ECRPeerReview effort – focused on ensuring the recognition of peer review efforts by early career researchers. Please help us start by filling out, and sharing, this survey: https://tinyurl.com/ECRs-in-peer-review Peer review is viewed as central to the evaluation of research, and in the case of peer review of manuscripts for journal publication, an activity that is seen as part of the service of a researcher. Graduate students, as those training in how to carry out research, should therefore clearly be participating in, and receiving training in, constructive peer review. Postdocs are researchers in a position of mentored independence – working on their own projects and research plans, and learning how to manage a research group from an independent principal investigator. As such, postdocs are already intellectually capable of being fully involved in the peer review process. But, how involved are these early career researchers (ECRs) in journal peer review? A recent survey in eLife, a journal publishing life sciences research, indicated that 92% of those surveyed had undertaken reviewing activities. But more than half, and 37% of graduate students, had done so without the assistance of their advisor: This statistic may come as a surprise to some but, anecdotally, discussions with ECRs (particularly in the life sciences) point to a number of incidences of “ghostwriting” of peer review reports: that is, carrying out peer review of a manuscript, writing the report, and submitting it to a supervisor, who submits the report (or some version of it) under their own name, and without the name of the co-reviewer. This led us to ask: just how often...

In Defense of Science: The National Science Policy Network Is Helping the Next Generation of Civic Scientists and Engineers to Organize Nationwide Network Receives More than $100,000 in Grants for Local Work See this op-ed in Scientific American. From the National Science Policy Network: The National Science Policy Network (NSPN) is excited to announce a major new effort to support early-career science policy groups nationwide. With the support of Schmidt Futures and other national partners, NSPN will significantly increase assistance to grassroots STEM groups advocating for greater engagement of the scientific community in policy and advocacy. The political turmoil of the past year has catalyzed civic engagement amongst members of the scientific community. New data from a survey conducted by NSPN earlier this year shows that out of 22 science policy groups surveyed, 45% have launched within the past year and a half, and 60% of all groups operate on an annual budget of $1,200 or less. To support the growing trend of civic scientists, NSPN is launching three programs focused on providing training and resources. First, we are providing microgrants for early-career science policy groups, giving seed funding to support high-impact projects and facilitate the growth of smaller, underfunded groups. Second, we are collaborating with Research!America on the Bipartisan Candidate Engagement Initiative to raise awareness among candidates running for national office on the importance of scientific research. Third, we are hosting a fall symposium in NYC to bring together student science policy, advocacy, and communication groups from across the country. All of this is available at a new website that also...

See below for a call for nominations on the BoD of the International Network for the Science of Team Science (INSciTS) – they are interested in applications from emerging scholars: INSciTS Board of Directors Nominations, Deadline June 22, 2018 For those of you who were not able to attend the SciTS conference in Galveston this year, I am writing to let you know that we have, under the guidance of our advisory board and with generous funding from UTMB, decided to form a 501c3 – the International Network for the Science of Team Science (INSciTS). INSciTS will now be the new official society of our Science of Team Science community. The formation of INSciTS allows us to: 1. Engage in long-term strategic planning beyond the scope of annual conference planning 2. Develop and deliver ongoing academic and professional development throughout the year to support long-term career growth 3. Foster academic and practice interest/working groups to generate an even more robust evidence base to inform practice Ultimately, we aspire to the following INSciTS vision: INSciTS will create and facilitate a high-impact community that develops and disseminates an evidence-base to support team science and shapes how research is conducted to solve complex problems. Currently, our Board of Directors includes: Maritza Salazar Campo (President) Kevin Wooten (Treasurer) Holly Falk-Krzesinski (Secretary) Gaetano Lotrecchiano (President-Elect). We seek to fill up to 8 more positions on our board and nominations are open until June 22nd! We encourage you to become part of the leadership to shape the direction of our organization. For more information about how to nominate yourself or someone else to the board, please see the attached document. ...

Data from an eLife Early Career Researcher Group survey At a recent meeting about journal peer review, one of the key outcomes was the realization that there needs to be a greater effort to recognize the scholarly contributions of graduate students and postdocs. “Ghostwriting” of peer reviews, whereby the name of graduate students and postdocs is not passed on to, acknowledged or collected by the journal, but is instead submitted solely under the name of the PI is an apparently widespread but unrecognized phenomenon. For example, data in a recent survey conducted by the eLife Early Career Researcher Group, showed that nearly 60% of graduate students and postdocs surveyed saw no involvement by their supervisor in preparing a peer review report. It’s clear that a number of journals do recognize that early career researchers are involved in the peer review process – but which ones? What do they require in the reporting of co-reviewers, and what language sets the expectation for this reporting? To which journals can early career researchers be directing their efforts to participated in, and be recognized for, peer review? And by recognize, this does not mean publicly disclosing the names – merely that the journal editor knows who has really carried out the review, likely key data in a climate where it is claimed there are too few reviewers to carry out all peer review. We are therefore excited to announce, as part of an upcoming project at Future of Research on recognizing the contribution of and empowering early career researchers, that we are partnering with a number of actors in this space...